Category: charity bike ride

A great way to improve your cycling is to sign up for a charity bike ride. It gives you a fitness goal, and it also benefits other people who rely on the charity you assist. I started riding a road bike nine years ago to complete a charity bike ride for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). And here I am nine years later – five JDRF rides, six years as a cycling blogger, five years working in a bike shop, and a totally obsessed road cyclist. When I talk about charity bike rides, I don’t mean the big mass

One of my favourite mantras is that you only improve your cycling when you set a goal, and a mass participation bike ride is a great target to set for new cyclists, as well as seasoned ones. There are a number of them around Australia, most are in scenic locations. Here’s a selection of the ones I’ve done before. I’m sure there are plenty of others so please share your experiences. An added bonus of many of these rides is that they are involved with charity partners so participants have the opportunity to help fundraise at the same time. New South

If you think the Gong Ride or Around the Bay is a serious challenge, then think again. A few weeks ago I was contacted by a team of women who are training for a huge race/relay called Race Across America that takes place each year in June. Last year I wrote about two American women tackling it and this time it’s a team of four Australian women calling themselves the Veloroos – Natasha Horne, Sarah Matthews, Julie-Anne Hazlett and Nicole Stanners. Race Across America known as RAAM is a race but instead of being in stages it is one continual

The wonderful Tina McCarthy from Wheel Women recently visited Sydney and ran a bike skills course and asked me along on the Sunday morning. It was great interacting with a great group of female cyclists. One of the questions I was asked was “Have you got any tips for riding the Gong ride?” and I most certainly do. For those of you who are not Sydneysiders the Gong Ride is Sydney’s biggest mass participation bike ride which is held on the first Sunday of November each year. The ride which has been going for 32 years, is a scenic route

I like to think of myself as a bit of a cycling evangelist. That doesn’t mean I give regular sermons about cycling but through this blog, my job and other social occasions I love the opportunity to share my love for cycling with others, particularly women. So here’s 10 reasons why you should think about cycling. They are in no particular order (just the order they jumped into my head). The initial list took me about five minutes to write so you can see that I’m completely enthusiastic about this subject. 1. Fitness Please note that I haven’t called this

A couple of months ago I wrote about the amazing Kacie & Dani who were in heavy training to complete the 3,000 mile Race Across America. I’m pleased to say that the pair made it, and I was lucky enough to catch up with them again post race. Q: Were you both nervous in the days leading up to big race? And did you feel like you’d trained enough? Dani: I wasn’t nervous. I tend to not get overly anxious before big races or nervous. I did feel overwhelmed in the days before we left Atlanta, I felt like I

A month or so ago I was contacted by two inspiring American women who are training for an ‘ultra’ cycling event called Race Across America. It’s a 3,000 mile or 4,828 km ride that has to be completed in nine days. I always thought that undertaking a long ride like Melbourne’s Around the Bay which is 210 km was a pretty impressive feat. That was until I heard from Kacie & Dani. I asked them a few questions about their quest.

I’m writing this on my return flight from Adelaide after spending a week enjoying Australia’s own UCI cycling event, the Tour Down Under. For those of you who don’t already know about it, it’s a six day professional men’s road racing event held every January centred around the South Australian city of Adelaide. It was my sixth visit to the southern capital for the race and it’s great to see it continue to grow in popularity with lots of locals coming out in support as well as interstate and international visitors. For me it has always consisted of two key

When I first started doing long rides, my training and preparation was almost entirely based on my physical readiness. I’ve always understood the big role that mental preparation plays for elite athletes but I never thought I had anything in common with them. After four years of cycling, I’ve done quite a few charity rides and a small amount of racing and I always get very nervous beforehand. But I’ve never known how to overcome it except to just accept that it happens and live with it. I’ve also thought that my anxiety was more a female trait so I

I’m not sure how other cyclists define a long ride but for me it’s anything over about 100 km. For others, it could be many hundreds of kilometres or even as short as a 50 km ride like Sydney’s Spring Cycle. In planning my training program, I firstly factor in that I ride on a regular basis, usually about four times per week with a total of around 150 km so I’m fairly ‘bike’ fit. However the ride I’m undertaking in about four week’s time is 160 km (or a century if you’re from the US) so for me that